'Cause mami's a rida and I'm a roller

The sun poured out of the sky, long and hot like kettles of oil onto the early afternoon as she poured buckets of water over her wellies in the ditch behind the barn. Blood mixed with water and human filth and ran pink and cloudy into the mud. Liz craned her head to the left and reached into the hole in her neck. Flesh ran crusty up against her pale and uncalloused fingertips and the dried blood of last night's examples clung in riverbeds of burned saffron down the back of her translucent hands. Beneath her squalid cattleman's hat she scowled over the landscape that lay cringing under the hot hot sun. Moistened with sweat, dried with nocturnal winds, wetted with sweat and dried again in the morning sun- her black hair stuck in hooks around her face as the lion's fur nearest his mouth stands erect for the first hour after a particularly vociferous feeding.

Her slate eyes flickered in blue rage as she found another gash, this time on her cheek. Anger diminished apace and perturb gave way to tenderness as a golden-maned child came bounding from behind the truck.

"Ma ma!" cried the child and threw her arms around Liz's sticky neck. The child's arms adhered to the sweaty blood and tears of last night's toilings.

"Hello, little girl." Liz winced and she scooped the child into her arms. Her husband, Jake, rounded the corner and handed her a cup of coffee and newspaper.

The rebel attacks grew in 1973. Liz had been hired by her brother's firm to come down and get some sunshine in her family's life while providing the surreptitious muscle for government enforcement of rules during the resettling effort. Having accomplished all she could professionally as a psychologist specializing in experimental therapies in London, she had spent four years in Hamburg before being recruited to Rhodesia the year their daughter and only child, Charlemagne, was born.

By moving her research to Africa she accomplished an atmosphere of untethered creativity while also serving her Homeland.

Once Dr. Shattler's experiments were finished and the bodies incinerated, a canvased truck would lumber dark and leathery as a rhinoceros over quiet night roads. Bumpy tree roots of roads which clucked and moaned with daylight traffic of chickens, goats, landless farmers and women with loads of household burdens. The truck would squeal strangely in the silent yard and after a loud knock a door would swing back timidly like the hatchets of children. The sleepy-eyed ghosts were told their missing relative had been located and to come right away to the hospital. The translator was typically shot on site once the family had been secured in the truck. The rebels families were driven blindfolded to a swath of dirt which lay gummy and hard beneath their huddling bodies under the cold African sky until the sun came to reveal the day's intentions.

During the three years she conducted her research, a documented 750,000 blacks were resettled in 200 equally-documented Villages- as they were called at the time.

She was managing the wing of government that would eventually become the Psychological Operations Unit in 1977. The literature outlines in part, a goal of "creating emphasis of 1 POU operations against the terrorists structured toward psychological confusion of the enemy with the objective of so undermining his morale that he becomes unwilling to fight and is encouraged to defect from the forces of communism."

Alas that would not be published until after Dr. Shattler had been killed, her husband remarried and her child... well. That story needs to be told, but not now.

She kissed her husband on the inside of his hand and took the coffee and paper. On the page he had folded back was printed the list of guidelines her brother's office had drawn up for the citizenry considering harboring terrorists calling themselves rebels.


Restrictions will be posed upon all of you and your Tribal Trust Land and Purchase Land:

1. Human curfew from last light to 12 o'clock daily.
2. Cattle, yoked oxen, goats and sheep curfew from last light to 12 o'clock daily.
3. No vehicles, including bicycles and buses to run either in the Tribal Trust Land or the African Purchase Land.
4. No person will either go on or near any high ground or they will be shot.
5. All dogs to be tied up 24 hours each day or they will be shot.
6. Cattle, sheep and goats, after 12 o'clock, are only to be herded by adults.
7. No juveniles (to the age of 16 years) will be allowed out of the kraal area at any time either day or night, or they will be shot.
8. No schools will be open.
9. All stores and grinding mills will be closed.


"Do you work tonight?" Jake asked, picking up her duffel and heading toward the house where the behemoth, savage dogs were clamoring and howling, stretching chains to their capacity in the entry yard. The canines silenced as she approached and sat quietly as she reached into her knapsack for some treats. Three hands, curled and black with dirty fingernails landed in a stiff and flat thud on the ground in front of the dogs.

Liz sighed heavily and put the paper in her shirt pocket, "Yes. Until these animals figure out how to behave like civilized beings, yes. I will always work tonight."